Jamie R

Microsoft have today released Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 to the public.

This is certainly a promising version, with several features that didn’t end up in Firefox 3, such as private browsing. IE8 now supports private browsing natively, a big step for privacy and security on the web. Microsoft have also included safeguards against dodgy addons - IE8 now includes automatic crash recovery. If an addon or a web page becomes unstable and causes IE to lock up, only the actual tab will be affected, not the entire browsers, as such was the case in browsers at the minute. The core of IE8 won’t crash and the other tabs will remain stable.

Although I am primarily a user of Firefox and Safari, from a web developers point of view I am certainly looking forward to what else future incarnations of IE8 has to offer.

You can find IE8 Beta 2 here on Microsoft’s IE8 site.

Jamie.

Firstly, for anyone who noticed, my site has been down for the best part of the afternoon and has only just come back up as of about 10PM due to the power supply dying on the server that my site is being hosted on. In truth, according to WM’s support, several of their servers had power supply failures. The whole event seems rather percurliar to me, seeing as Web Mania have their servers in a data centre which I am believed to have protection against power spikes etc. My host usually isn’t that willing to give out too many details about things.

My site wasn’t the only affected. Bryn’s East Coast Dubs site was also offline for about 8 hours. All appears to be well and stable again now though.

So the long awaited Service Pack 3 for Windows XP has finally been released. However, this release hasn’t been rosy for everyone. Pretty much every Windows Service Pack is bound to cause problems for some people with various configurations (look at XP’s SP2 for instance), so it’s hardly a surprise that SP3 has been reaping havoc on some people’s computers, in particularly AMD based HP machines with HP OEM installations of XP.

Jesper Johansson has written up a detailed insight into the problem of SP3 + HP AMD hardware + HP OEM installation of XP = dud copy of XP that doesn’t boot. If you’re having a problem of this description, then head over to his site and have a read.

I’ve installed SP3 on the few last remaining XP boxes that I have running and I haven’t had any problems whatsoever. I’ve also installed it on a couple of customer computers and haven’t had any adverse effects either, so on the whole so far it’s been a fairly positive result.

Jamie.

Yesterday my friend Ross and I made the trek up from Colchester up to Birmingham to attend Microsoft’s “Heroes Happen Here” launch of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 at Birmingham’s ICC. Aside from the 4 hour train journey and getting up at 4:30AM, it was a great day. I learned a lot and the seminars I found pretty useful.

However, although the day was good with a lot of free stuff (including free lunch and beer), I am pretty disappointed in some areas:

• The promise of “full” promotional versions of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio turned out to be untrue. The promotional software delegates were given included a 365 day trial of Server 2008 Enterprise, a copy of the SQL Server 2008 Standard CTP (full version hasn’t been released yet but we will get a 365 day trial of it when it has) and a full copy of Visual Studio 2008 Standard. I’m annoyed by this, because there was no word from MS or anyone before the event stating that we would receive evaluation copies of the software. With previous launch events, delegates have received full copies of the products being launched.
• The organisation of the whole event I thought was pretty shoddy. Some staff didn’t know what another did (communication was bad) as well as about 12:30 the upstairs entrance to Hall 3 (the upstairs gallery), was closed off due to “the hall being prepared for lunch”. However, my lunch as a delegate on the IT Pro track was between 12pm and 1pm. I went in another door to find the whole of Hall 3 packed with people.
• There wasn’t enough time between the seminars. At one point, I got into one of the seminars I wanted to go late because I had to get through a lot of people doing pretty much the same thing as me.

It was a really good day overall. However, I would like to see a separate event for delegates attending as “IT Pros” rather than developers. If there were two different events rather than one event trying to satisfy what both camps want, then there would be a lot more focus on what each camp wants to see and do. The seminars were good and I thought were fairly thought out. Having said that, one of the seminars started late and things over ran and the whole presentation wasn’t delivered in it’s full entirety. Some of the seminars I wanted to go to I couldn’t because they coincided with another one I wanted to go to or was already in, so this was a shame.The closing session talk was by Simon Peyton Jones, and looked into the need for today’s applications needing to be able to support multicore processing architecture. ‘Twas really interesting.

The whole event was free (with the exception of the train ticket), so I can’t really complain in a sense. It was a good day and I’m really glad I went.

Jamie.

[I'm sorry for the length of this post, it just got a bit out of control!]

Well at the end of the day a blog is somewhere where one can convey his thoughts, so I thought I’d do just that. Some would say I’m far too open about stuff, and randomly post it on the Internet. However, I’m me. I’m just me…

Christmas…

My Christmas was fairly boring in parts. I can’t really say I did much, other than just the usual Christmassy things of seeing family and friends, unwrapping a few presents and indulging in far too much food and alcohol. Ah well. Now I’ve got to loose it all.

I got some really awesome presents for Christmas. Laura made me a really fantastic little boxy thing with lots of lovely bits in there. She also gave me a new lava lamp (just what I needed cos I’d broken my old one) as well as a hand decorated cup and mug. It was really, really awesome of her. It’s all so awesome. She’s really creative creative like that. Danke

New Year…

I spent new year round Nick’s house in Frinton. Me, Nick, Alex, Lloyd, Kris, Graeme, Jamie, Alarick and Ross had a proper good time and saw the new year in with lots of booze and loud music. It had to be done. Some of the antics we got upto were rather amusing. Let’s just say, J knows not to be the first one to fall asleep at a party

New Years Day was welcomed by a trip down to a cafe in Frinton. Full English breakfast (it’s bad, read below) all round was duly deserved after the drinking that went on during the previous evening. All sorted lads.

New Years Resolutions…

I’ve been thinking about what I would class as a “New Year Resolution”, and I can’t think of one single thing - I can think of lots of things. With most people breaking them within a month, I guess there’s no real point in actually making a few. However, I am going to do so. There are a few suspects which I guess I could call a suitable candidate for being a NYR. Unfortunately, it won’t be anything that special or fancy, but they are connected with me, and only me in a way. I guess, for the 5th or so year running, the main one that I would call NYR is to loose weight. I’m pretty annoyed with myself, because in the last two months (well, counting from the beginning of November), I seem to have put on about a stone. Now, due to lack of decent scales I haven’t weighed myself yet. I’ve been about 16 stone for the last couple of years (yeah, it’s scary), but I think it’s increased. I can no longer get into *three* pairs of jeans that I could fit into 2 months ago, nor can I get into my Vans t-shirt.

Now the thing is, I’ve said that I will try and diet countless times in the last few years. Yes, I have lost small amounts of weight here and there. However, I’ve never really properly dieted. I guess one would call me a bit of the lazy side. However, I want this to be the last year that I have to say “I’ve said that I will loose weight as a new year’s resolution for the last 5 years and it hasn’t worked”. I want to actually make a go at it. I don’t want to loose much, only probably a stone or two. I want to be able to get back into them jeans. I want to be able to bike around without feeling out of breath. I want to do it for myself.

I really want to make a go of it. Anyone who will know me knows that I can be a bit of a slacker at times. I have motivation to do things that other people have told me to do (for instance, if someones needs help with something), and all that kinda stuff. I however have little motivation most of the time to actually do anything that concerns me. I guess you could call it that I’m slowly pushing a self destruct button.

I’ve been saying that I’ll try and loose weight for ages. I’ve also been saying I’ll try and get a job for ages. I really need to actually change my attitude towards all of this, because at the end of the day, no one else can. Only me. I guess this blog post is a way of trying to kick myself into actually doing something about it rather than sitting on my arse and doing nothing about any of it.

Self motivation?

Self motivation is one of the demons of Jamie R. I battle with it. Half of me says, stuff it. Do it tomorrow, and I’ll go back to the forum that I’m currently browsing or continue a half witted (or sometimes deep, complex) conversation with someone. The other half of me tells me to get on with it. It’s like college work. I’m in the middle of getting my examination prep. work done for Tuesday. I have a 20 hour examination (over 2 weeks) on Microsoft Excel (of all things…) starting on Tuesday. I guess I shouldn’t be here now writing this blog post, but to be honest, I’d rather do this.

What I’m really like…

I guess for the people who have never met me and don’t know me personally, their only idea of my personality would be through my website - predominantly the content of my website of my blog, and the style of my writing. You will probably see that the website doesn’t get updated much and that there are things which say “will be done soon” or whatever. I’m not gonna make any excuses, like I’ve done in the past. This website doesn’t get as much attention as it should. This website doesn’t have half the stuff on it that I like it to have. However, I just don’t have the time anymore. I don’t have the time, and to be honest, I stopped doing most of my web development related stuff coming up for 2 years ago. I guess you could say that was my old life. I’ve moved on.

Moving on…

On the subject of moving on and change. I was thinking the other day about how things are generally in my life now, and from about the beginning of 2006. That’s a whole 2 years ago now. Thinking retrospectively, a heck of a lot has changed. Not just with my life, but with people and their attitudes in general. At the end of the day though, it has to be said. People get older and people move on. Maybe that’s what I don’t like. I don’t like people moving away from me. I like the people who are close to me to stay close to me. I don’t like drifting apart from people. I guess the whole talk of university and everyone going their separate ways puts me in that frame of mind, I don’t know.

Laurababes…

This year, Laura will be off to university. I don’t know what’ll happen between us after then. All I can say is that I hope we stay together. She means the world to me, I don’t know what I would do without her. She’s just everything to me right now. I guess the three weeks apart from her while she’s been in Australia has done me some good. Whilst I’ve hated it because I’ve missed her, it just makes me realise how good the last 15 months has been with her. She’s back from Australia soon, so I’ll be able to hear all the tales she has to tell. I really can’t want to see her, she’s back on the 7th. Maybe that’s why I’m so happy atm. Ily

10 years time…

I wonder what my life will be like in 10 years time. I’ll find out in 10 years time. Will I be single? Married? Have my own place? Know many of the people I know now? Will my mum and dad still be about? What kind of job will I have? How much money will I have?

Career…

I guess one thing leads to another there. However, I really want a career in IT preferably, doing network administration / management etc. A position in a large company’s IT department as a network administrator / technician would be awesome. At the minute though, I need a contracted job, but I’ve got to start small. I do freelance(ish) IT work for a few small businesses where I live and support a few private people I know. It’s a start in the IT industry and it provides me with valuable experience. Also, when I was helping out at my college, it was really invaluable. I learnt so much there.

Theatre Tech…

I guess I’ve come to the conclusion that although I love doing lighting/sound etc for shows, concerts etc, it probably won’t be a career path for me. I don’t know why in a way. I absolutely love doing it. Something just doesn’t feel right about it. I think I’ll always end up doing it here and there as a hobby, but I don’t think it’ll be a career. There again, I might be doing something totally different in 10 years time!

2008…

I think 2008 will be an extremely important year for me. I will:

1. Turn 18. Will be good,apart from paying tax.
   
2. Start driving (some of you may remember that I took my first driving test in August. I’ve now failed 4 times. I have bad concentration sometimes, and during that kind of test, it flattens me)
3. Finish sixth form education. Do I go to another college? or uni? Depends on the next point
4. Hopefully get a full time job. If I succeed in getting a decent job then I won’t go to university. I’ve applied for the 2009 season anyway.
5. Hopefully shed a few stone, but that down to me I guess. As are 3 of the above points.
6. Hopefully go abroad. I’ve never had a proper holiday abroad, so it’d be nice.
7. A few other bits…which I can’t really discuss here because it’ll just cause problems.
8. Lots of other stuff I can’t think of. It’ll come to me - there are other things, but it’s 3:25am.

A good kick up the arse is just what the doctor ordered…

I’ve had enough of saying to myself that I will do something, and then not do it. I want to actually make a go at doing the things that I keep on kidding myself at. Loosing weight is the main thing. I know I can do it. Everyone says I can do it, it’s just…doing it. If it took 5 minutes, it wouldn’t be a problem, but that’s not the case. It takes will power, iron determination and a good kick up the arse. I start dieting, but then I revert back to when I’m bored or a bit annoyed, I’ll eat. I’ve done that since I was 7 years old. I’m fed up of it. I’ve promised Ems that I will try, so I have to now. I’ve promised…

Why so long?

And for the record, I decided to write this rather long, kinda varied blog post rather than what I did last year because I wanted to do something different for a different year. It’s a new year, and a very different one. A lot of things are going to be different this year. A lot of things are going to change. I’m fairly sure that some of the people I knew last year I won’t know by the end of this year. In the same context, I’ll meet a lot of new cool people this year. 2008 is a new year for new experiences and new challenges. I want to leave the shit behind that’s plagued me over the last few years and start afresh. I find it hard to forget the past, but I want a fresh start in a fresh year.

My friends…

I have a lot of awesome friends and I thank them for being them. The usual sorta thing. You know who you are, I won’t mention names this year.

Learn from the past, look to the future…

Anyway…as my college’s old slogan was “Learn from the past, look to the future”, I’ll take that…and somewhat agree.

Well if anyone actually reads all, or even any, I thank them. Please leave a comment if you want to. I think I can safely say I’ve written the longest blog post ever.

Have a good 2008. Have fun!

Best wishes,

Jamie R.

Sitting in college at the moment…bored. This article makes me really laugh!

Phantom of the Opera was FANTASTIC. Having wanted to see it for ages, me and Laura went down to London on 20th October and saw it at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Haymarket. Whilst we were there, we checked out a few of the sights of London and went to Chinatown. Chinatown was better than I thought it was. Being a bit of a food man, I did have to go and check out a few of the restaurants around. I think I might have annoyed her a bit though, because the word “buffet” kinda interested me, and so I dragged Laura into the nearest all you can eat restaurant…yeah, bad I know.

And so there I was, I guess doing what I do best - When we left, I found the real Chinese restaurants down the road, leaving me regretting not taking time to actually look around, and putting my money in the nearest restaurant that said “buffet”. Oh never mind.

The hotel was quite nice. We got a package deal from a company called “Premier Ticket” which included one nights hotel and theatre tickets. In the end, the hotel wasn’t bad. We stayed at the Holiday Inn in Regents Park. Overall, it was a rather nice two days! That was the main thing we did to celebrate our year anniversary.

Anyway, Friday 26th was the release of OS X Leopard, Apple’s long awaited successor to 10.4 Tiger. I haven’t had a chance to get my paws on a copy, yet (even though I don’t have a Mac that will run it - I have 2 G3’s with 10.4 :/) so I can’t really say anymore. On Saturday 20th (the same day that I was in London), Apple opened their store at Lakeside, not too far from me. I was planning to go to the opening and grab meself a free t-shirt. However, when I saw the opening date I nearly shot myself, but oh well. I also missed the opening of Leopard due to having other stuff to do at the time

November November November…Well, it’s getting cold outside! Tis no good. I’m going up to Colchester on Monday 6th to see my mate Nick’s band Scorpio Toy play. I’ve been meaning to go to one of their gigs for a while, but haven’t yet cos I’ve been busy. I’ve made an effort to ensure that I can go this time, cos Nick keeps telling me to go! On Tuesday 7th, I and Jamie W are off to see Enter Shikari at Brixton. Should be awesome!

All the best,

Jamie R.

Well at the moment it’s 23:59, so almost Sunday 17th June 2007. I’m sitting here in a rather philosophical mood - with one main question bouncing around my mind. What does the future really have for us? I mean, some people say that everyone’s lives are already planned, and that we are living them day by day as they’ve been planned, but is this really the case?

Most things which you do, well some things, affect the way that something else in the future happens, or how events will turn out and end up. If you think of an event, and think about how it ended, you can usually work out how it ended like that, and how if you’d changed one or two things during the goings on, how different the ending would have been. I guess that’s the story of my life sometimes - you don’t know the ending, or the beginning, but how if you’d changed a few things how things would have been so different. I can’t really think of a specific example, but I’m just saying in general. There are things I guess which I could fit into this.

In life, you get these little things which test your strength as a human being and your ability to cope with things. It varies from person to person, but at the end of the day we’re all humans and we all have some form of mental strength - some people have more than others - some people can deal with things better than others can. However, it’s not always the case of how we deal with things, but more so what we do as ways of dealing with things. Mentally, you can do anything - in your imagination you do anything that you want, but in real life, you can’t - you can’t do anything which you might just imagine.

Well, I really am talking shit tonight, but I’m in that kind of I’m-going-to-talk-shit-and-bloody-bore-the-pants-off-you mood - I’ve had an alright evening I guess. Rows with dad about shit and all that kinda malarky, but apart from that I’m ok.

I’m looking forward to the summer now. When I woke up this morning (well, OK I’ll be honest - 12:30pm) it was hot and perfectly sunny. No clouds around or anything. Ten minutes later however, the rain clouds had moved in quickly and it was pissing with rain. Lame…it’s been like that all day - one minute nice, then rainy etc.

This summer will be different from last summer, because it’ll be shorter and most people will be working somewhere or other. The biggest difference will be that last year was GCSE year, and the holiday was 11 weeks rather than the standard 6 which we usually get. It’ll also be the last summer holiday in between years before people go off to university, so we HAVE to make it a good one. Some people are or will be driving - myself included. I passed my theory test on June 2nd (got 32/35 on the questions and 61/75 on hazard perception) which was good. I should also be taking my practical test in mid July. All I need now is some money for a car and insurance and other things needed for it.

Me and LJ are encroaching on 9 months - woo, three quarters of a year. Now it’s awesome, but it’s rather strange in a way. I mean, I never thought that when I first started dating, the relationship would last this long, but it has - and it’s still going strong. She’s lovely

My cat is sitting next to me at the moment (I’m sitting on my dining room table for some reason - I don’t usually sit here) and she’s sitting next to my computer on the table with her eyes fixed in one position on my face. I think she’s hungry, so I better go and feed her. Beautiful little puss cat she is

My website hosting and domain registration is up for renewal soon so I better get that paid up otherwise this site will be going off-line!
In terms of IT news, most people who keep updated with it will know that Apple have released Safari for Windows. Hopefully, it’ll mean that the previously Mac OS only browser will now grab a much higher market share than previously. It’s been out for Windows for barely three days, and within a few hours several flaws were discovered in it. Now, as of writing now, the Windows version (which is a public beta of version 3) has been downloaded over one million times. Hopefully it will mean that because Safari has been released for the operating system platform which has the biggest market share in the world, its browser market share will increase even more.
Anyway, I know most people have already done their GCSE and A-Level exams - I did my 15 hour IT practical exam last week which went alright. For anyone who has done exams, or is doing them soon, here’s a rather belated Good luck - GOOD LUCK!

Well, I’m off - ttyl.

Jamie.

Posted for a while, so here I am. I guess it’ll be a long one, but I’m bored and I think I might as well write something here. Post a comment if you’re gonna read it!

I’ve been doing a fair bit of stuff lately to be honest, which probably kinda explains the lack of work on the site and blog posts. Right now I’m watching Panorama on BBC One into the whole “computer revolution” and a study looking into whether there is a clear link between WiFi and health problems. Roughly every school, a lot of homes and work places are now installing wireless networks etc. It’s looking into whether there’s an impact on our health caused by mobile phone technology and wireless network technology. There are a lot of debates either side of the argument - should we have and use WiFi (particularly in schools) or not? I think we should, from what I’ve seen, there have no adverse effects to the use of WiFi, however I do see both sides of the argument.

There might be a few people around who “have” been affected by the use WiFi about, however there amount of use and coverage it has now, it’s pretty much unavoidable. If there was really a problem, then surely there would be a far bigger outcry and public response from it? Maybe my view is wrong, but it’s what I think. Surely, if there was a problem, a *lot* of people would have symptoms and problems about it. One woman on the show is apparently sensitive to WiFi and has undergone tests. It’s true, there are electro-sensitive people, however the UK doesn’t recognise it as a disability, whereas for instance, Sweden do. Also, don’t you think that they would be affected by standard phone masts and radio stations?

In terms of what I’ve been up to, I guess it’s a fair bit. Last month (well, 22nd April,) LJ took me to see Trivium at Ipswich’s Regent Theatre. It was an awesome concert, and although it was in a theatre, really exceeded my expectations. I really enjoyed myself and have uploaded a few photos to my picture gallery. Also, me and three of my buddies have gone and got tickets for Metallica’s July 8th concert at the new Wembley Stadium as well, which will be extremely good seeing as it’s Metallica’s only gig in the UK in over 16 years I believe.

College is going ok. We’ve signed off media now because we’ve done all the work for this year and have no summer exams in it. I had a general studies exam today, as I did last Monday. I’ve only got IT left now, which will be a 15 hour exam spread over 2 weeks.

I also went upto Duxford at the weekend (Sunday 20th May) and went to their Spring Air show. It was the first air show I’ve been to this season so far, and hope to go to a lot more. The theme of the airshow was to commenenrate the 25th ending of the Falklands War, so it was a rather moving and rememrable display. I was surprised to see a Bell UH-1H Helicopter there, which to be honest, was unknown to me before the airshow. The UH-1H Iroquois, more commonly known as G-HUEY or “IROQUOIS” - serial number “ 13560″ was the star of the show. It was a “trophy” of the Falklands, seeing as it was captured from the Argentine Army and brought back to the UK at the end of the war. Now it’s owned by three Huey enthusiasts and looks forward to a good display season. A full write-up and pictures are coming, I’m in the process of sorting the photos out.

My driving lessons are going rather good at the moment, got another one on Wednesday after college and then I’ve got my theory test booked for Saturday 2nd of June. I’m happy with the way it’s going at the moment, my driving instructor Paul says that he reckons I can do my test at the end of June. I’ll get it booked up soon when he thinks I’m ready for it, and will see whether the little men at the DSA wanna give me a licence or not! Laura’s also started driving now, so hopefully we’ll be both soon be driving about!

The summer is on the way, and I hope will be fantastic. As you can probs gather from blog posts last summer, summer 06 was the best summer I’ve ever had, and I don’t know whether I’ll ever be able to beat that experience again. It really did rock - I hope this summer will be just as good, if not better. People will be driving and it’ll be good. Me, Bryn, Dean, Ricky and whoever hope to go on a few roadtrips etc, which will be schweet! If I pass my test that is.

Anyway, I better go. Have fun people!

Jamie.

Well next month (in a few weeks time), I have my mock GCSEs..fun fun fun. I’ll laugh if the outcome in a few subjects (read: Science mainly) is good. I’m pretty good at science, well I like to think that and I know what’s going on, however I never do that well in Science tests. In the last one, I got beaten by a girl I know, nice I’ll stick to moaning about the three main ones y’gotta know…Maths, well Maths - it’s alright. I can do what I need to do but I don’t really get the *nack* of alot of it - Algebras not bad however I don’t really see the point of of alot of stuff that you learn in school that you’re most likely never to use once you’ve left. C’mon, how’s learning about the amount of voltage that a pile of dissolved salt can carry gonna benefit an IT Technician? Don’t get me wrong, I like learning and I like school, however I don’t see the point of some of the stuff you’ve gotta learn nowadays. As for English, I’d would have been much happier studying George Orwell’s works a bit closer in detail rather than Shakespeare - but I suppose William Shakespeare’s our heritage AND WE HAVE TO LEARN ABOUT HIM AND HIS WORK OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. Sigh~

Anyway, I installed, for the first time, Ubuntu at home the other day to try it out. I’m after a copy of Redhat really, however that can wait whilst I work my way through something which I’ve been meaning to do for a while, try out seveal different Linux distros. My test system is an 850mhz Duron box with 512MB RAM and a 20GB Western Digital HDD. Not that good in spec, but it runs alright Now with Ubuntu, I can’t compare it to any other Linux versions as of yet ’cause I haven’t tried them…you never know, I might give up using Microsoft Windows Server 2003 on my main machine at home (until I get new laptop) and take up Linux usage, however I don’t see that coming.

Meh, I’m off, ciao

Jamie.

Why is it that when you’re looking for something, you don’t find what you’re after, but find loads of other random shit that you don’t need? I’m looking for my camera for the Walton on the Naze Carnival 2005 tomorrow (silly git I am, I can’t find it :-() when I find:

• One old camera
• A rounded IDE Cable
• 1.1ghz Athlon Socket A CPU
• Remote control for my TV
• 10GB IDE HDD I didn’t even know I had…

…someone help my find me camera :p